


You Keep What You Catch

by hollow_echos



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Crueltide, M/M, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:51:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2854784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_echos/pseuds/hollow_echos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shan Yu is painted as a monster, a villain who attacked a country unprovoked. Here is the tale they don't tell. About a man who strove to protect his clans from the expansion of the Chinese empire, about a man who found himself lusting after a most unexpected enemy soldier.</p>
<p>Warnings: AU, dark fic, dub-con, bondage/BDSM undertones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Keep What You Catch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostie/gifts).



You keep what you catch and what you kill. Words to live by, as all Huns did. It was what had Shan Yu huddling down with his belly against the wet grass at this obscene hour in the morning. The sun had yet to rise against the ridge.

 

But a man isn’t handed free things, at least not amongst his people. They were a hardy people. Not the richest in possessions as they were in tradition, but this was a rite of passage amongst the youth of his tribe, men and women alike, for those who wished to join the raids or skirmishes with other tribes that were hallmarks of each passing year.

 

A warrior could be judged by the mount he rode into battle. The stock that lived in this part of the country was a reflection of their people. Short legs, stocky builds, sure-footed, and well adapted for picking a careful path up a rocky cliff side or mountain path.

 

So the success or failure of this morning would determine a great deal about his life in the coming years. The quality of the mount he captured, the one that was his to keep and rely on as his people travelled across the land, it was everything.

 

He uncoiled the rope in his hand, peeking just high enough over the grass to see the ponies grazing near the river. Save for the trickling of water over rock or the occasional snort or stomping of hooves, the scene was quiet. Scanning the herd, he selected a bay colored yearling. With a burst of speed he pushed off the ground, horses scattering in all directions at the sudden activity.

 

In the commotion, he threw his lasso, against the odds snaring the neck of the yearling he’d chosen. He dug his heels into the ground, pulling hard against the pony, which thrashed against the sudden burn of rope against its flesh.

 

Shan Yu’s stance was steady; his grip was firm. The beast could fight all he wanted, it wasn’t getting away. His catch, his mount. It was the first step toward becoming a warrior.

 

-X-X-X-

 

He saw much of the world from the back of that horse. He travelled from the dry plains through the mountains and into forests so thick and muggy the sweat rolled down his spine in thick streams. Where layers of furs were traded for the thinnest of silks and it still seemed too hot to bear.

 

He rode to war beside his father and sister; he took a wife from the women amongst his tribe and brought her back shiny stones that she would weave into his hair as they celebrated their victories and the raiding season gave way to the chill of winter.

 

In the jungles he stalked and slew a leopard, its hide adorned his bed and his comrades took to calling him Leopard Skin. It kept his wife and him warm as they huddled through the cold season in their yurt.

 

Life had a steady pace to it in the years that followed. The snow halted travel and had the village hunkering down for the season. They’d gather around campfire and relive the battles of their kinsmen and their ancestors in song and tale. They’d drink rice wine and eat spiced meats, wax bowstrings and sharpen swords.

 

When winter finally broke they’d ride to war. Spring brought skirmishes with neighboring tribes or the plundering of caravans that risked the overland trade routes. The war drum was the tempo he lived by. He wet his blade in the blood of his enemies. 

 

Life was good, until one summer it wasn’t.

 

-X-X-X-

 

The Chinese had been a distant rumor on the horizon. A people widely spoken of but rarely encountered. They tilled the land beneath their feet, planted crops, and built homes far larger and more lavish than they could ever need. They were a backwards people. Shan Yu counted it among his blessings that he rarely crossed paths with them.

 

Until the year when the sound of ax against trees became a constant cacophony in the background. They felled a great many trees and dragged them into lines to begin construction of their so-called Great Wall. It was an ugly blemish on the otherwise natural landscape.

 

If it would’ve stopped with the wall, Shan Yu and his people could’ve lived with it, even the insulting notion that a pile of mud and brick would be enough to stop their mighty raiders. No, it was the culture that the Chinese brought with them that made Shan Yu’s hackles rise.

 

Emissaries from the emperor visited not only their tribe, but many of the neighboring clans as well. They proclaimed the advantages of the sedentary lifestyle – of raising livestock and planting crops. It took Shan Yu but one look at the bodies of those men – where there hung soft flesh and fat on bone instead of hardened muscle – to know that it was to be the doom of his people and their culture if they allowed this encroachment to continue unchallenged.

 

Some clans believed those lies. They traded their horses to the Chinese, fine mounts turned into pack horses to be used in the construction of that wall, in exchange for seed that his clansmen plowed into the ground.

 

Fewer clans answered the call to raid that year. He saw young boys with rakes in their hands instead of bows and weapons.

 

His culture, his way of life, was dying.

 

-X-X-X-

 

The elders saw his viewpoint as the misplaced anger of an immature youth. He wound mellow in time, he would have children and realize that having food in abundance, enough to feed the many mouths, was more important than tradition.

 

History could be rewritten, traditions could change. Shan Yu just needed to embrace these changes and move forward into the new era. He spit at the feet of his elders and stopped speaking his wisdom on deaf ears.

 

He wasn’t the only one with these views. An entire generation of young men had been trained as warriors only to be told they should set aside their swords and begin anew.

 

The elders were wrong. The Chinese were a menace. That wall grew taller and cut deeper into their clan lands each year. The elders went so far as to welcome it as a source of wealth and trade instead of recognizing it for the insult it was. Their village stood in the shadow of that wall. Shan Yu wanted to raze it to the ground.

 

-X-X-X-

 

He raised an army instead. For the first time in spoken history the young men from warring clans gathered under one banner at Shan Yu’s back instead of feuding amongst one another. Let the elders grow fat and suckle like pigs prepared for the slaughter. His army would fight.

 

It wasn’t all men. Although more rare amongst the warrior ranks, women were present in frequent enough numbers to bear mentioning. His sister rode among them. She’d cast aside the idea of her life being measured by the rank of the man she married or the number of children she had pulling at her skirts. She was made for the saddle, for the road, for the battle.

 

It was on the night before they were to leave for the Wall that she gifted him with a falcon. It wasn’t a pretty bird by aesthetic standards. The beak was crooked but sharp; her talons cut into his arm and drew blood when she perched there for the first time. Much like his mount, she was to be a tool first and companion second.

 

She would hunt beside him, her shrill cry would echo over the battlefield. They would split open many a Chinese soldier together. Her clawing at the eyes while he drove his sword into a gut. Some souls were made for the battlefield; they two were alike in that.

 

Not to say he didn’t care for her. He taught her to perch on his shoulder, to come to his call, to retrieve on his command. But he also learned from his sister how to pluck problematic pinfeathers when the falcon was molting.

 

After a good hunt or a successful battle he’d toss chunks of raw meat in her direction. An army, a soldier, a living tool is only as good as the full stomach it works on.

 

He named her Hayabusa, Japanese for peregrine falcon. It didn’t need to be complicated, at its root; a name should reflect the nature of a being.

 

-X-X-X-

 

His army was blooded for the first time in the shadow of that Wall. They tried their skills against Imperial scouting parties, against emissaries of the emperor. They burned the crops that fed the mouths of the workers who slaved on the Wall by day.

 

Word of his army was on the tongue of every clansmen, every Chinese citizen. Enough to attract the attention of the emperor, but not enough to drive him to take direct and open action in retaliation.

 

If the emperor was too much a coward to emerge from behind his wall and fight them, they would take the battle to China.

 

Shan Yu was not a coward. He would not ask anything of his men that he would not do himself. He led not from the back of the army hiding behind a shield of humans, but instead called orders from the front. He was the point of the spear tip that plunged into enemy ranks, cutting down all who stood in his path.

 

Armies, even the Imperial troops of China, fell before his blade. The time came when they had won all the battles that there were to win on their side of the Wall. The Chinese had chosen to retreat behind that mighty buttress, imagining that the brick barriers they had so carefully erected would still his momentum.

 

They scaled the wall under cover of darkness. A lone soldier stood haloed in the firelight, holding a torch above the fire pit, threatening to set it alight. The soldier dropped the torch into the pit.

 

“Now all of China will know you’re here.” The soldier meant it as a threat. Shan Yu grinned, the flames reflecting in his golden eyes.

 

“Perfect.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

They swept through the countryside unopposed. No Imperial armies rode out to meet them, swords raised and armor glistening under the blood red sun.

 

Peasants and farmers gathered their children close and cowered as they passed through villages, peeking through slits in doors or out of alleyways. Shan Yu left the villages untouched. It wasn’t with these people that he a qualm. He had eyes only for a vain and boastful emperor who sat on his throne and ordered the expansion of his borders. As if the Heavens granted a ruler that right, as if he was entitled to keep what he didn’t sweat for, bleed for, and capture by his own labors.

 

From the peasants and farmers he took nothing except for an image of what his people may too become if this threat was not stopped. If the head of the emperor didn’t roll down his gilded steps and stare up empty and lifeless at the people who thought this figurehead had a right to rule them and command their obedience by birthright alone.

 

He pressed forward.

 

The spirit in this land wasn’t totally dead. From time to time a peasant son or farmer daughter would trail after his army like a shadow. He’d ride his sturdy mount to the back of the ranks and offer them a sword, a home, a purpose greater than turning the dirt until they laid down to die upon it.

 

That’s not to say there weren’t losses. The Imperialists set off a series of explosions as they were crossing a wide river. The bridge collapsed.  Mounts and soldiers alike were dumped into the frigid water and disappeared beneath its murky depths as loaded down with armor and thick furs as they were.

 

That night was chaos. A blur of shouts and screams and whinnies echoing against the smoke churned and blackened skies.

 

Only the light of morning allowed them to reorganize, join up with the portion of their army that had been forced to find an alternative crossing several miles downstream, and let them count their dead and missing. Fifty-three of his brothers and sisters lost their lives to that act of cowardice. They burned what bodies they could find.

 

They cut their cheeks in mourning. Six on Shan Yu’s face, one for each of his senior officers who had died. The rest he had one of his comrades trace into his flesh with a fine pointed gutting knife. They trailed down around his shoulder until they wrapped across his lower spine to settle in against his hip. The wounds stung when he moved, when he sweat under his furs. Each time a welcomed reminder of the price of this fight and the cowardice of the enemy.

 

Too afraid to hit him straight on, the Imperialists had snuck around to his back and cut as his unprotected flank.

 

-X-X-X-

 

After that, he was no longer content following the winding roads toward the heart of China and the Son of Heaven on his golden throne. They cut a straight path through whatever terrain stood in their path. He saw red when he closed his eyes. He dreamed bloody dreams of the vengeance he’d take upon the Imperial army.

 

It was a crisp fall morning when he perched in a tree surveying the miles and miles of forested wilderness that spread in every direction. He knew the way to the emperor; his fingers had traced that line across his maps so many times that it was wearing a line into the parchment. What he didn’t know is where the Imperial army was hiding between here and there. He expected honor in their fighting tactics the first time and it had cost him and his army lives. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

 

Hayabusa sailed toward him on a low, eastern heading draft of wind. She dropped a small doll from her talons into his outstretched hand.

 

Black pine from the high mountains, white horse hair from the Imperial stallions, sulfur from cannons. It was the only hint he needed.

 

His aimed his army at the Tung Shao pass and pressed them forward at a rapid march.

 

-X-X-X-

 

They caught a pair of Imperial scouts who were unfortunate enough to cross their paths. He told them to lope back to their army with their tails tucked and a nervous ear always listening for their pursuit.

 

It only took one man to deliver a message, though, and cowards who ran didn’t deserve his respect in combat. His bowman dropped one as they fled for the tree line. Shan Yu trod over his corpse as they pressed forward, followed by the throngs of his army.

 

-X-X-X-

 

He found the Imperial army camped on the banks of the pass. He had to pause and marvel at their order and discipline for just a moment. Red tents neatly lined in precise rows, sentries stationed at regular intervals.

 

He was impressed for just a moment, just enough to take it in. Then he ordered it razed to the ground. His troops surrounded the Imperial army’s camp to prevent any from escaping the blaze.

There would be no mercy granted for cowards who struck at his heels instead of facing him as warriors. They shot pitch-soaked arrows into the fray. He traced their path in the sky, watching pinpricks of light as they burned through canvas tents and then the burst of brilliance as each structure caught flame.

 

The wails of the dying rose through the snowy pass. His mount shifted from foot to foot uneasy at the haunting noise. Many a ghost would ride the winter gales around these mountain peaks after this eve.

 

He had meant to spare the village. They were not the folk who had raised arms against him, who had built a wall into his land, who had corrupted his clansmen with dreams of wealth and gluttony.

 

He had a clear plan – kill the soldiers, raze their camp to the ground, spare the village and its people. But war isn’t clean. The margins don’t always line up perfectly.

 

The fire spread when a wagon laden with gunpowder was pulled through the village by a team of spooked horses. Already ablaze, it exploded in the merchant square. By morning all that remained was the ruins of a camp, a village, and a swath of blackened corpses.

 

The villagers they buried. They hadn’t deserved the fate they got.

 

The soldiers he left where they lay. Cowards deserved to stare up with empty eyes until the snowdrifts buried them like a forgotten memory.

 

They spared one life, that of the general who commanded this army.

 

General Li had commanded the detonation of the bridge that caused such catastrophic loss of Hun lives. Shan Yu bound the man, forced him to kneel in the snow and watch all night as his camp and his men burned.

 

He thought it a fitting fate. Shan Yu had been forced to stand on a muddy riverbank and watch through smoke and fire as many of his brothers and sisters drowned.

 

General Li didn’t look away. Shan Yu owed the man a bit of respect for that.

 

They camped in the pass. He allowed his army to loot the ruins for valuables; they had earned at least that much. Shan Yu spent his time interrogating General Li. Gently at first, promising him fine wine and a warm fire if he would only tell them what defenses stood between them and the emperor’s palace.

 

When his offers were met with silence, Shan Yu drew his knife and balled his fists and asked his questions again between strikes. There was screaming and sobbing, but he got enough information to put together a rough image of what they’d face.

 

In a different world, under different circumstances, General Li might have been the sort of man that Shan Yu would have respected. Perhaps they would have stood shoulder to shoulder as brothers facing the same opponents in battle.

 

But this wasn’t that world. In this life, Shan Yu wanted the emperor’s head. General Li had the information he needed to make that dream of his a reality. Shan Yu wasn’t afraid to dirty or bloody his hands to draw those bits of information out word by word.

 

He reduced the man from a proud standing general to a bent and broken form. The only thing the man hung onto was the utterance that his son, Li Shang, would stop them. He would protect China; he would shoot Shan Yu from his horse and leave him to rot in the snow. He’d deliver them from this blight on their land.

 

Shan Yu wanted a great many things for his people – to kill an emperor, to rip down a wall brick by bring until it was but a pile of rubble, to restore the culture of his people.

 

It was more rare the things he wanted for himself. He had a wife, a fine yurt, a good mount, a hunting falcon, and an army that rode as his command. Few warlords would die unhappy under such circumstances.

 

But this Li Shang the general spoke of with such reverence, such pride. Something stirred in Shan Yu’s loins and leapt at the words this broken man spoke between broken teeth.

 

Shan Yu wanted this general’s son, not for his people or his army, but all for himself. He wanted to take this man he’d never met, the epitome of everything wrong with a leadership passed down along a lineage.

 

A man should keep what he catches and what he kills. He should earn the rank he holds and get only so far as his own efforts can carry him. Li Shang, son of a general, had all of those things handed to him. Shan Yu no longer dreamed of killing an emperor, he dreamed of pressing Li Shang’s face into the mud beneath his heel.

 

He drove his sword between the shoulder blades of a broken general and left his corpse to lie in the snowy field. It was to be his letter of introduction to this Li Shang, a statement of his intention.

 

Li Shang’s world would burn down around him and Shan Yu would be there to lick up the tears.

 

-X-X-X-

 

He made a mistake in the mountains. Lust for a man he had yet to even lay eye upon distracted him. They charged down from the mountains upon the last bastion of Chinese strength, a motley conglomerate of soldiers that had been rejected from the Imperial army proper. He intended to wipe them out down to a single man, leaving only Li Shang alive to suffer his wrath.

 

They were backed up against a cliff face as Shan Yu’s Hun army swept down upon them like a wave. It was a sure victory; the Chinese had nowhere to go. He had thousands of men riding at his back.

 

With a mighty war cry, they plunged down the snowy hillside, through the Pass, to deal the Chinese army a fatal blow. A single soldier with a single cannon darted out ahead of the throngs. He was close enough that had his mount not reared, he could have separated the soldier’s head from his shoulder with a single sword strike.

 

Hayabusa knocked the flint from the soldier’s hand. All signs pointed to Shan Yu’s victory in this duel. And yet fate dealt a hand against him. The soldier brought an avalanche down on his army.

 

The division between sky and earth blurred as the snow swept him up in its wave. The world flashed white. The Chinese army faded away.

 

-X-X-X-

 

When Shan Yu clawed his way up to the surface from Mother Nature’s icy grip the land was white. His men and women and mounts were gone. A shrill cry from Hayabusa above was the only sound to suggest that he wasn’t a man alone in his failed plight in this mountainous terrain.

 

He whistled up to her, she flew down to meet him. He gathered broken fragments of wood from amidst what remained of his army’s supplies peeking out from the snow. He started a fire and sat there long into the night as one by one the survivors of the avalanche dug themselves out and drifted toward the flames.

 

He had entered the Tung Shao pass with a mighty battle horde. He would leave with less than twenty of his army, a loyal falcon, and the clothing they wore on their backs. They headed for the heart of the Chinese empire, its capital and its emperor.

 

-X-X-X-

 

They hid beneath a paper dragon and wound through the streets of the Chinese capital, the Chinese citizens cheering them all along the way. If only the realized that they were cheering on the harbingers of death for their beloved ruler.

 

Li Shang rode at the front of their parade. Shan Yu’s gaze was somewhat obscured by the dragon façade he hid behind, but he could see the long legs of the soldier son’s mount. The way Li Shang’s red cape billowed down behind him to settle upon the flanks of his horse. It was the sort of flippantry that would be a hindrance in battle, tangling around his legs or giving an enemy soldier something to latch onto and drag him down to the ground.

 

Shang Yu could feel his hands curling into fists, the low rumble in the back of his throat the startof a growl. This is what his people were to be become if they allowed this farce to continue.

 

He bit his tongue, he swallowed the growl. He bid his time and wound through the streets of the city in step behind Li Shang. His time would come.

 

Shan Yu laid eyes upon the emperor for the first time as they climbed the stairs to the palace and stood on his terrace. He was an old man dressed in silks and all the finery China had to offer. It didn’t mask the way he paused between sentences to catch his breath, or the way his legs trembled when he stood, weak from disuse.

 

Here was a man far past his prime, who was waited upon by servants as he sat on his cushioned throne and decided the fate of people far beyond the borders of his empire. It was an abomination.

 

On his signal, his men thrust aside the dragon parade costume and they charged toward the emperor. In a flurry of activity they dragged the frail man into his palace and barricaded the door after them.

 

The fate of the Son of Heaven lay in his palm on that balcony. His to squash with a fist or end with a sword while all of China watched on.

 

He heard the remnants of the Chinese army, those misfits, ramming the doors to the Imperial palace with some heavy object. The walls vibrated with each hit, but here in the heart of the empire, the Chinese guarded their crown carefully. They would hold.

 

“Your walls and armies have fallen and now it’s your turn. Bow to me.” There was no heat in his words. It was simple statement of fact. The emperor would bow, of his own accord or as the life leeched out of his withered frame. “I tire of your arrogance, old man. Bow to me!”

 

“No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.”

 

This man had encroached upon his clan’s lands, had corrupted his people to a life of gluttony, and still he stood tall as if he had nothing to be held accountable for. The man would kneel, one way or another.

 

Shan Yu pulled his sword back for the strike that would divest head from body, the killing blow that would cripple China at its source. He tensed his muscles and swung his sword forward in a killing arc. He never missed.

 

“No!” A voice cried out from behind him as he swung.

 

There was a flash of red, a head rolled across the floor. The torso dropped to knees first and then keeled to the side, red staining the rosewood on which they stood. The Son of Heaven lay dead at his feet. Good riddance.

 

A weight knocked him off center; someone was clawing at his back, his neck. Wrestling to get an arm around his meaty neck and into a chokehold. Didn’t this soldier realize the task was done? A sentence dealt, a debt repaid. The soldier had failed in his most sacred duty to protect the throne.

 

Shan Yu reached over his shoulders, fingers finding gaps in the man’s armor enough to get a handhold. He threw the man into a stone pillar. The man dropped to the ground. On second glance, it was Li Shang.

 

Shan Yu grinned, his canines flashing like fangs in the lantern light. Fate smiled upon the victor. You keep what you catch and what you kill. The throne was his to take if he wanted he supposed, but all the wanted was the emperor dead, the country in chaos, and to return to his people and rekindle their culture.

 

That didn’t mean he couldn’t take the spoils of war with him. A pair of bowmen stood at the entryway leading into the palace. “Truss him up, he comes with us. Our task is done.”

 

He could hear the nervous murmur of the crowd below. The exchange that had just taken place had been obscured from their view. They still stood on a precipice, hanging onto a thread of hope that their ruler was alive.

 

As is men dragged the unconscious form of Li Shang away, he grasped the head of the emperor by it’s matted hair. The mouth hung half open as if perhaps the man had realized his folly and tried to surrender with his dying breath. He walked to the balcony and surveyed the crowd below. Forms shuffled in a nervous mass, undulating as if an ocean.

 

He threw the head to the people below. Let that be the image of their emperor burned into their minds for dynasties to come. This was what came of leaving the control of a country in the manicured hands of a pampered old man instead of the grizzled grip of a proven and blooded warrior.

 

A wail rose up from the people below, one that sung agony and sorrow.

 

“No, no, no. What have you done?” He turned away from the crowd to see a woman rocking the headless torso of the emperor against her breast.

 

“I delivered this country from a great blight. Let this be a lesson you learn from. Put the reins of this country in a calloused hand of a blooded warrior who stands a chance of defending his own life. A ruler should lead, not rely on his people to protect him. He should be able to demand their obedience, not hope they are meek enough to follow half-hearted commands.”

 

There was no heat in his voice. He had gotten what he’d come from. The life of an emperor, and Li Shang in ropes and thrown over the back of his horse.

 

She raised her head, looking at him for the first time. It wasn’t the gaze he’d expect from a concubine. There was sorrow there, but a fire too.  He spoke. “Gather your sons and flee this place. Whatever protection you had here beneath the emperor died with him. You are far too pretty to waste in the sacking of this city.”

 

She snarled, bearing teeth. She reached for her hair and pulled it away from her face. “I’m no concubine.”

 

He stepped forward, tightening his hand around his sword. “The soldier from the mountains. My men and women died by your efforts. A great many of them.”

 

Her eyes darted between his sword and his steely gaze. She didn’t flinch. “You’ve killed a great man.”

 

“I killed a symbol, a figurehead. What did he ever do to deserve the crown that they placed on his head or the offerings they placed at his feet?”

 

“He held this empire together.”

 

“And perhaps as it implodes and falls apart someone worthy of the title will take those fragments and hammer them into a straight form worthy of defending. Perhaps with my efforts this country will find a ruler who fights his way to the top and earns that rank. It is only through a baptism of blood and sweat that one appreciates the title they bear.”

 

“What are you doing with Shang?” she asked, dropping the argument. Perhaps she was wise enough to see the wisdom of his words.

 

“You keep what you catch. He’s mine to do with as I please,” he said.

 

“You won’t get away with this. I swear it on my sword and on my life I will spend every remaining breath in my body and beat of my heart repaying the destruction you have sowed here today.”

 

He cocked his head, examining how taut every muscle stood out against her sinewed frame. “Take that fury, kindle it, and stoke it. Gather it about you like a cloak and wear it into battle. Then perhaps you will be the leader that China needs.”

 

He walked past her. She didn’t move from where she knelt. Weaponless, she was smart enough to know when to bide her time and when to strike. Her eyes stared daggers at his back as he left.

 

-X-X-X-

 

They stole mounts from the palace. The horses were too leggy and lightly built for his taste, but they would do until he could get back out to the borderlands and claim a new mount to replace the one he’d lost in the Pass.

 

With Li Shang’s unconscious form draped over the back of the saddle and the scant remains of his army at his back, they loped out of the capital just as the looting and riots were beginning.

 

One look at his hulking form atop the emperor’s pure white stallion was all the statement they needed to make. Even amidst carts being overturned in the streets and families rushing to pack their possessions and flee the city before it descended into open warfare, the throngs split around him. People stopped to gawk at the person who had ended a dynasty and destroyed whatever peace they had enjoyed. Behind them, that bubble sealed back up people resuming their quarrels and whatever other meaningless tasks to which they had dedicated their efforts.

 

-X-X-X-

 

They traveled faster than the news could spread. The monsoon season held off even as the clouds hung heavy and grey on the horizon, threatening to loose their rain upon them. Shan Yu took it as a sign that whatever gods or spirits the Chinese worshiped approved of him toppling an unworthy emperor’s throne.

 

They ride hard for three days to keep that lead. Shan Yu presses his soldiers and their mounts hard. By the time they are riding through an abandoned outpost on the Wall and into Hun territory, he feared their horses may drop at any time and refuse to rise.

 

This was among the problems present in the horses bred by the Chinese. They made fine chargers, their height putting their riders far enough above foot soldiers to be able to survey a full battlefield. But ride them across such a long distance as what lay between the Chinese capital and their homeland and they were foaming at the mouth, hooves dragging along the ground. Shan Yu and his men demanded every ounce of strength and endurance possessed by these creatures.

 

Li Shang had slept through the first hard night of riding. The general’s son fought against his bindings, spitting out his loosely tied gag and shouting such obscenities at Shan Yu that if he didn’t silence the man’s insults his soldiers might start questioning his leadership.

 

Leave room for a hungry wolf to nip at your heels, refuse to kick it in the muzzle and show it its place, and it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the pack was circling and looking for their opening.

 

So Shan Yu pulled his small column to a halt to let the exhausted horses drink from a stream. He pulled Li Shang from his horse and set the man to stand on his bound feet.

 

“Li Shang, your father spoke highly of your spirit and your resilience. I admire that in a man under most circumstances, but not under these. You can silence that sharp tongue of yours and ride with me, or you may run behind the horses on a rope. If you’re to behave like an untrained animal, you’ll be treated like one.”

 

Shan Yu pulled at the binding on his gag until it was loose enough to drop around his prisoner’s neck. “You’re a coward. With weapon or hand alone, you will take your last breath by-“

 

Shan Yu clapped him across the side of the head with an open hand, momentarily stunning the man. He replaced the gag, ran a line from the Shang’s bound hands to the back of his saddle, and cut the cord around the soldier’s ankles. “Enjoy your run then.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

He kept the horses to a light jog, slow enough to let them regain some of their leeched strength but brisk enough that Shang was sweating to keep pace. He wasn’t abusive. This wasn’t about breaking Shang’s spirit. That steely glint in his eye, the calculating expression, it was what made Shan Yu’s breath catch. God, the soldier son was gorgeous in those moments.

 

It wasn’t about breaking that strength. That was how you turned a prized stallion into a nag fit only to be dragged at the back of a pack line and carry gear across long distances. It was about teaching obedience. The general’s son would learn to bite his tongue and yield when Shan Yu demanded it.

 

It only took an hour until the slack in the line was gone and Li Shang was weighing heavily on the tether, not quite being dragged along but relying on the forward momentum of the horse and the rope to keep him moving. Shan Yu pulled the band to a halt and looped his mount back to where the man stood panting and sweating, eyes focused on the ground. The general’s son was a smart man; he knew when he was bested.

 

I’ll give you the option again, soldier son. Ride double with me or run. It’s still a full day’s ride to my clan lands.

 

“I’ll ride,” he muttered. It was quiet; almost enough so to be lost on the wind, but then Shan Yu had always had sharp hearing.

 

To see one of China’s most powerful men bow to his whims was a powerful symbol indeed. That power might was enough to get drunk on, intoxicating, addicting, that rush.

 

He cut the cord with one quick strike of his knife, although he left the man’s hands bound. A momentary yield did not mean indefinite obedience. He cupped his hands together, giving Shang a place to place his foot and climb up into the saddle.

 

Shan Yu swung up behind him. The sensation of Li Shang riding in front of him, rubbing against his firmness with each step of their mount, was not an unwelcome one.

 

-X-X-X-

 

They made better time than he had expected. They were home before nightfall. It was that early dusk when the sun was down over the horizon and left just enough light to see by without lighting their torches.

 

He had sent scouts ahead to announce their victory. The elders who had crawled into bed with the Chinese emissaries would be unhappy, but then, with a small army at his back and the emperor dead, what could they do but welcome him with open arms? Whatever China may have offered them in another lifetime was gone.

 

The aroma of smoked deer wrapped around them as they neared camp. A feast prepared for a victorious army. There would be mourning ceremonies for the many sons and daughters, husbands and wives that had perished, but tonight was to be one of celebration.

 

He passed his sweat-crusted mount off to a young member of their clan to rub down and turn out with the rest of their stock. He ushered Li Shang into step at his side as they wandered through the gathering crowd.

 

He had eyes only for the wife he hadn’t seen in so long. He found her at the entrance to their yurt. She leaned against the entryway with a casual stance as if he were just coming home from a day’s raid instead of the cross-country trek and a war that had passed in the time that had elapsed.

 

He ushered Li Shang past them both and into the yurt where he wouldn’t have to worry about the man fleeing. Filling the entrance to their home with his frame, he pulled her in against his body in a warm embrace.

 

“I hope you’ve brought me more than this boy, Shan Yu. I’ve patched our roof and quibbled with the elders and hunted and smoked meats for the winter in your absence. Don’t tell me this is all you’ve to show for your time away while I’ve pulled both of our weights in work.”

 

“I destroyed an army,” he whispered into he ear.

 

“And I dealt with your worried parents. I think I had the harder of the tasks.”

 

A chuckle rose from his throat. “I killed an emperor. I dropped an entire empire into chaos.”

 

She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes before tilting her chin up to nip lightly at his ear in the way that always made him melt. “I suppose that is enough. I suppose that’ll do.”

 

He released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She was everything to him. His past, his future. His everything. Her approval meant the world. “Food. Let’s eat. I’m sick of stolen bits of rice and whatever small game we could kill on the road. Let us see what feast our clan has prepared.”

 

She didn’t say it, but the way her gaze darted between Shan Yu and this strange man he’d brought into their home was question enough. Li Shang still stood awkwardly in the center of their yurt, watching this exchange in silence yet unsure how to proceed. “He comes.”

 

Li Shang had learned where petulance got him and didn’t need a second request. He fell into step at Shan Yu’s side. The Hun grinned, baring his teeth at the soldier son.

 

Part of it was the power, to have another human being he looked at with lust yield to his command was enough to make his breath hitch. But this wasn’t about the short term. He wanted this to work. He wanted Li Shang as his own, as part of his clan, as part of his culture. That integration meant helping Li Shang see that they weren’t an evil people hell bent on sewing discourse and chaos without cause.

 

Shan Yu had never raided into Chinese lands before they built their Great Wall. He hadn’t wanted any of what had come to pass. But when the Chinese built their wall without rites earned in battle, when they turned his culture from one of warring clans to sedentary farmers, that was an affront he would meet with an appropriate response.

 

It was a night he would remember. The elders heaped lavish gifts and praise upon him, speaking as if this war of his had been their idea all along. Let them hide behind their lies; let them have their false pride. He had his clan, a future secured without Chinese interference, a wife and a new concubine at his side. That was enough.

 

-X-X-X-

 

As the fires ebbed down to glowing coals his soldiers wandered off to different homes with their spouses or the people they’d chosen to warm their beds for the night. His wife stole one more kiss, long and deep, before splitting off from him in search of the female soldier who’d ridden with him that she hadn’t bedded in the many weeks since.

 

Li Shang had a bewildered expression on his face, a complete and utter look of shock, as Shan Yu’s wife grasped hands with that female clans mate and they disappeared into another yrt.

 

Shan Yu turned his attention to Shang. “What? You’re telling me people don’t take multiple mates in your land?”

 

“Well…uh…”

 

Shan Yu chuckled and shook his head. “So many rules, such rigid barriers. That Great Wall of yours is an apt metaphor for your way of thinking in more ways than you know. Rigid, unyielding, and utterly out of place in such a fluid world.”

 

“You just let her take other people to bed like that? Doesn’t that make you feel inadequate?”

 

Shan Yu shrugged, staring into the embers. “What care I who warms her bed? I’m gone for months at a time during raiding season. I would not curse my wife with a cold and empty bed in those months. I certainly take partners amongst my soldiers.”

 

“I mean I suppose people fuck other people besides their spouses where I’m from…but not in the open like that. It’s something for whore houses or a moonless night without a light in the sky by which to see them.” Shang had at least somewhat recomposed himself.

 

Shan Yu rose to his feet, pulling on the soldier son’s lead and moving the two of them toward his yurt. Shang balked at the entrance, a look of abject fear in his eyes, having some fleeting notion of what this night was to be. Shan Yu kept a firm hand on the rope, drawing him forward until the furs of his yurt covered the entrance and granted them privacy.

 

“Soldier son, if you haven’t yet learned that sheer resistance to my will gets you nowhere, you best start paying attention.” Shan Yu dropped the rope to the ground, daring Shang to try something.

 

The man stood perfectly still as Shan Yu circled him like a predator eying his prey. The man had worn his Imperial armor all the way from the heart of China to here. It was a ridiculous gesture. It had meant extra weight that the soldier son had had to carry, extra effort to expend. But when Shan Yu had told him to strip out of it, he had fought more violently against that idea than any other command he had made.

 

Sometimes you press, and sometimes you yield a bit, regroup, and strike again. A good leader knew when to do each.

 

So he had let the foolish soldier wear his armor through his country as it imploded into a civil war around him. He had let him wear it and chafe in it until he wore blisters, red and raw, for his belligerence.

 

He had given the soldier son a small bit of leeway. But his eyes yearned to drink in every curve of the man’s chiseled physique, and after the leagues they’d ridden and the many fantasies that had played out in his mind, those urges would no longer be denied.

 

He pulled his hunting knife from his belt, reaching for the first strap on the man’s armor and cutting it with a quick tug against the sharpened blade.

 

“Don’t,” Shang hissed, backing up a step and reaching for the plate of armor where it had been cut as best as he could with his still-bound hands.

 

“I wasn’t done. Step back to where you were and hold still.” Shan Yu spoke with a level tone, betraying not a hint of emotion. Let Shang read into it what he would.

 

The man narrowed his eyes, anger burning there. Nonetheless, he paced forward a step and stood still.

 

Shan Yu smiled. He made a few more well placed cuts with his blade and leather plates began pooling at the soldier son’s feet. “Listen close soldier son, because I’ll say this only once. The Imperial Army is dead. Burned in a fire, dead in the palace by my blade or those of my clan, or scattered to the winds and whatever bidder will pay the most for their sworn fealty.

 

As he cut one more strap the entirety of the torso piece fell away, leaving Shang in but a think silk shirt. Shan Yu’s lust grew as he peeled each layer from the man, getting that much closer to bare flesh. “Your emperor was soft, a product of inbreeding and generations of coddling. He pressed his borders too far, he had too many sons by too many concubines and every power-hungry citizen of your nation is currently fighting to lay hands on any person with a drop of royal blood in their veins that could allow them to make a claim on the throne.

 

_“That_ is what came of your nation, that was the figurehead you served. A few well placed strikes,” he said, drawing a slit down the back of Shang’s shirt and peeling it away from his flesh. He ran a calloused hand along the contours of the man’s spine. “A few well placed strikes and you see what lies beneath. In the case of your nation’s government, a rotten and pitted fruit to the core. But you, soldier son, your father wasn’t totally wrong in his assessment of you. You have potential. That’s the only reason you’re alive.”

 

Li Shang’s entire posture changed as the last of his garments fell away. His shoulders, once held erect in a trained posture, bowed forward as if to hide his nakedness. “I’m not a whore,” the man whispered, a heat on his cheeks.

 

“I never called you one,” Shan Yu responded. “I thought to take you as a war prize, true. Your father taunted me with your existence, to his last breath he claimed you would slay me and drive us from your lands. I thought you weak, a person granted rank by virtue of your bloodline instead of demonstrated aptitude. I’m not often wrong, but I was perhaps wrong in this. You can sit a horse; I’ve seen you handle a sword. You’re a warrior the same as any of my clansmen. You may see us as barbarians but we don’t waste resources. Lay down on the bed, face up, arms and feet spread to the four corners.”

 

Li Shang swallowed nervously but lowered himself onto the bed. The thick furs rubbed against his blisters, causing him to wince.

 

“A prideful man can be foolish. Consider those raw spots on your flesh penance for that folly. Should’ve shed the armor when I asked you to days ago.”

 

“I’m an Imperial soldier-“

 

“You’re a soldier without an army leagues deep in enemy territory and chosen to warm one of their beds. Let us put aside this farce. You are _not_ an Imperial soldier any longer, at least not if you’re smart and wish to see just how far your great nation will fall in the coming months.”

 

The soldier son’s hands curled into fists even as Shan Yu wrapped silk cord around them and tethered four limbs to the four corners of his bed frame. He bent down, whispering low in Shang’s ear. “That’s right, get angry. Stay angry. I like that fire in my concubines.”

 

That word seemed to set Shang alight. The man went from stoic and calm to an enraged animal. As if by speaking it aloud made it true. “I am _not_ a whore!” Shang spat.

 

Shan Lu shook his head. “I didn’t call you a whore. I called you a concubine. There’s a difference.”

 

The man growled, flexing his hands as if testing the strength of the ties.

 

Shan Yu shed layers of furs until he stood in a simple pair of linen pants and bared chest. He laid down beside Shang, pressing fingers against his shoulder, lightly at first, exploring. Then harder, digging in until the man cried out, trying to flinch away from the ministrations.

 

“Just as anything in life, a slight shift of the scale changes things from a pleasurable touch the painful. I rode into war looking for glory, my men and women trusted me to see them through. Deception by your army cost me fifty-three in a collapsed bridge, Fa Mulan cost me the vast majority of my remaining troops in that avalanche in the Pass. All of those lives lost, clan mates gone, songs and histories we’ll never sing for what you’ve robbed of us.”

 

Shan Lu released the pressure. The man was panting in relief, sweat beading on his flesh. “And yet all of that, and I don’t take it out on you. I don’t flay the skin from your hide or drive a sword through your back. I fed you, I welcomed you into my clan, and invited you into my bed.”

 

Shang was working hard to look anywhere but at Shan Lu. At the ceiling, at his clenched fists, down at his chest to see the red fingermarks the Hun had left in his flesh.

 

Shan Lu continued, unperturbed. “I imagine that you lay here thinking that there is some noble purpose in your plight. That if you lay here in my bed and make the right noises that please me that any time I spend here with you is time I don’t spend further destroying your country.

 

“The truth of it is there is no noble purpose. I saw a man with a strength and physique that I found pleasing to my eye and brought it home from the war. Your country has enough greedy pigs within its borders that they will shred it from the inside out on their tusks. All I had to do was set things in motion.”

 

“I like power, I’ll admit it. I revel in it just as most men do. But I’m not a bottomless well that can never be filled. I want a stable clan, a place I would welcome raising children and passing our traditions onto them. The encroachment your emperor ordered into our lands and my people had to be dealt with. It’s done. That threat is gone. I’m a man home from war with physical needs to sate and a desire for companionship. I’d rather surround myself with people I respect. You could be one of those people.”

 

Shan Yu pulled on one of the cords binding the soldier’s hands, pulling it tighter against the frame and resecuring the knot. Shang Li’s penis jumped in response.

 

Shan Yu grinned devilishly. “Rope has its place. It’s good for tethering beasts of burden, or securing an unruly soldier son. Don’t think I didn’t see you examining the knots by the fireside. Not pulling or straining as if trying to loosen the bindings. No, there was reverence in your eyes. The beautiful knot work, something so simple and nimble, yet able to keep even you, a great Imperial soldier, from making a quick escape of it.”

 

He sat up and placed each hand on the bed just above Shang’s shoulders. Bending down, he closed his mouth over the tender bit of flesh at the base of the neck.

 

He let some of the fury out then, for the deaths of his men, for the wasted lives lost, for the lust he’d tempered until he could get Shang alone and could have his way with him. He lightened the pressure, then, lightly rubbing the tender flesh between his teeth and caressing it with the tip of his tongue.

 

Li Shang gasped, he moaned. He writhed and knotted his hands around whatever furs he could reach to help anchor him in the sudden burst of sensation. The ropes held him somewhat still under the Hun’s ministrations.

 

A few more moments of torment and Shan Lu pulled back, climbed off the bed, stepped back and gave the soldier room to breathe and process. The soldier’s eyes roamed around room until they crossed gazes. Li Shang’s eyes stopped roaming then and held steady and true.

 

Shan Yu wanted to fold himself up against the man just then, but he suppressed the urge. “I want you, Li Shang. As a concubine, as a mate, as a comrade in arms if you’ll join us. The empire you were groomed to defend is gone. I offer you a place in my lands in recompense.”

 

Shan Yu drew his knife, cutting each of the four cords that held the man. He sat down on the bed. “I am not afraid to kill in defense of my people, but I’m not a monster. I won’t force myself on an unwilling person. The door’s there. If you choose to leave no one will stop you. If you choose to stay all those things I offer are yours.”

 

Li Shang sat up, rubbing at his wrists as if he missed the sudden absence of his bonds. He glanced at the door, at the beckoning freedom, stood and shifted his weight from foot to foot as if planning to bolt.

 

Shan Yu waited. He watched. You keep what you catch and what you kill, it was true. But if you wanted true obedience, you had to let a man choose for himself.

 

Li Shang turned away from the door and climbed back into the bed, folding the furs around them, blurring the borders between their two forms. It was all the answer Shan Lu needed.

 

The End.

 

-X-X-X-

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy belated-Yuletide Ghostie! I bookmarked this prompt months ago as one I wanted to write, it really resonated with me as having some interesting possibilities. I meant to get this into the main collection, then the Madness collection, but the plot kept getting away with me and the words just kept flowing. Happy holidays!


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